After the headsman got back from lunch, the first condemned man to face the chop was a mutterer. He muttered as he stumbled shivering to the block, he muttered as he dropped to his knees in the dirt, glancing from side to side as though someone was about to burst through a wall and rescue him, and he was still muttering when the headsman brought his axe down, nice and slow, to find that sweet spot on the nape of his bowed neck.
It was a good sharp axe, the headsman’s axe, called Axe, and he had good strong shoulders to swing it with, though he hadn’t named those. He liked to rest the blade’s edge just above the prisoner’s neck hairs, close enough to shear them off, before the deed. This man was more or less bald, though, so he settled for a big brown mole that splotched across his pale skin. His arms twitched as the reflex to behead fizzled through him. Crikey, it had been a while. Three days was too long between choppings, really. Those peasants ought to space out their uprisings a bit more evenly.
Still muttering, this man was. Hmph. He’d had the headsman’s whole lunch to mutter through. How long did it take to finish saying ‘Save me!’ ?
He brought the axe back upright. “Are you finished muttering?”
The mutterer turned his neck to look up at him, eyes wide like eggs plopped on a big white dinnerplate (it had been a good lunch). “Wh-what?”
“We’ve just got quite a lot more of you to get through today, you see. We’d quite like to get going on you.” The headsman glanced down the row of gaunt shackled convicts trudging round the edge of the drab courtyard and trailing through the gate at its far end, hanging their heads from so many fine fat fleshy necks, just waiting for an axe to part them. “It’s no bother if you aren’t finished. We all like a good mutter, don’t we.”
The condemned man smiled a flat smile, “Erm. Really? You don’t mind? Well. Maybe I’ll just carry on for a little bit longer, then. In that case.”
“Mm, yeah. You just take your time there,” said the headsman.
“Okay. Yeah. I will.” The mutterer turned back to face the ground.
Chop.
The steel flashed and struck the block before the man could start a single syllable. Well, it wouldn’t have been right to interrupt him. Hopefully he’d finished whatever it was he had to say. His head tumbled down into the pile with the rest.
Ah, that felt good. With a quick jerk to free Axe from the wood, the headsman inspected his work: the usual big red disc, all shorn bone and spitting blood. He smiled. The wound lay just where he’d wanted it. Right through the mole. Well done, Axe. Two burly practicals moved in to drag away the body, and the long row of convicts shuffled forward. Its end was a long way off. This was a good day to be a headsman.
“Next!”
The next man was younger, a boy really — with a nice full head of hair. Axe was just about buzzing with anticipation in the headsman’s grip as the boy crept forward, wide-eyed and pale. Stumbling, shivering, dropping to his knees, glancing from side to side. Muttering.
The headsman tutted, shaking his head as he brought Axe back into position. Some people really did only think of themselves.
Leave a Reply